The Duke's Fourth Son

"You are going to the duke's rooms tonight, Jan," he said. "He wishes you to play for him in private to bring in Christmas Day." Jan assumed he would be playing his lute, which he had been permitted to bring with him, but wasn't so sure when, trying but failing to smile, the priest added, "You must be very brave. You must do what you have to do not to be returned to the dungeon with the other hostages."

When the duke came to his chambers not too long after that, he, indeed, wanted Jan to play the lute and sing for him while his attendants helped undress him and put him into a sleeping robe that buttoned down the front. After the attendants departed, and the duke was alone with the young man, though, he revealed what he really wanted done to take him into Christmas Day.

"Continue to play, but disrobe for me and pose on that padded seat," he commanded.

"Sire?" Jan said.

"Do it and do it now," the duke barked.

Jan understood fully at that point why he was here. "Sire, I never have—"

"All the more pleasurable for me, then," the duke said. "Do as I say or it will go badly for you and the other hostages. Your father has not honored his pledge. You hostages are fully at my mercy for whatever I want—and at the moment I want to take pleasure with your body."

Realizing that he was completely at the duke's mercy, Jan disrobed fully and reclining a bit on a red-velvet-covered backless stool near the foot of the duke's massive, canopied bed, the side drapes of which were closed to provide more warmth and complete privacy in the bed. He would have been more panicked if he was not predisposed to lying with men and if the duke weren't so arousing to him. As if was, he had no choice in the matter, so he decided to let what happened unfold without ineffective resistance. It wasn't just his well-being at stake here. The other hostages were at risk as well.

As the young man played, the duke sprawled in a chair facing him, drank wine from a flagon, and, with slitted eyes, watched the perfectly formed naked young man play the lute and softly sing ballads. At length, the duke unbuttoned his robe at the crotch, pulled out an erection, and stroked his shaft.

Jan now knew what the men at the banquet were joking about concerning Basile having hidden him away and he also recalled the warning Father Slawek had given him. His own father's court was not the most pious one, and the young man's looks and somewhat lower status in the family had made him familiar with flirting and advances from some men of the court—and he had done some fantasizing of his own along those lines, most recently about the handsome young priest, Slawek. So, he wasn't entirely confused or resistant when Duke Basile stood up from his chair, released the cord around his waist, undid the rest of the buttons on his robe, and shrugged the robe off his shoulders.

The duke, a seasoned warrior, was a tall, heavy, muscular red-haired man, the curly hair present on his body from his shoulder-length hair, mustache, and beard, down from the swirls around his beefy pectorals, and on down into a riot of reddish-blond curls of his pubes from which a thick, angry-red cock projected and two heavy, hair-covered balls descended. He was a medieval-period warrior, so battle scars could be seen on his body, but that gave him a sense of power and adventure—and seeing the man in the altogether took Jan's breath away.

The man moved as fast as a panther despite his bulk, closing the distance between his chair and the stool faster than Jan could react in any way. The lute skittered off to one side as the man reached and grabbed the young man. Jan's wrists quickly were bound together with the cord from the robe and he was bent on his belly over the stool, his head and arms hanging over one side, his legs spread and hugging the opposite sides of the stool, and the duke crouched, but briefly, behind the young man, pressing him down on the stool with a strong hand to the small of his back, and the duke tonguing the young man's anal opening.

"You will yield to me," the duke barked.

"Yes, sire," Jan surrendered.

Soon thereafter, Jan was writhing on the stool on his belly, crying out at the violation, as Duke Basile mounted him from behind and on top, worked his thick shaft into the young man's anal channel, and brutally tore Jan's anal virginity out of him. There, of course, hadn't been enough preparation, enough opening and stretching to accommodate the man, but that was how the duke liked it. He was a master, conqueror, and make-the-young-man-suffer dominator. With Basile, it was a military campaign and he needed to conquer. When the man was well saddled, the young man surrendered, lying there, moaning and gurgling, completely collapsed, as the duke rode him hard to an ejaculation.

When the duke had won his initial pleasure of the rival duke's son, he pulled off him and went back to the table where he'd left the wine. He drank and grinned at the young man, well pleased with the victory he'd won over the son of one of his primary enemies. Jan lay there, completely collapsed, belly down, on the stool, panting, moaning low, and watching the duke with wide-open eyes. Whether the duke cared or not, it had not been a completely unpleasant experience for the young man. Jan had fantasized about going with a man—and with a large, muscular, commanding man such as the duke. It had been painful, but men at his father's court who had tried to seduce him had told him that it would hurt the first time but that it would become something very pleasant in repeated couplings.

After a few minutes, the duke spoke. "You have two choices now. I can call guards to take you back to the dungeon to be with your friends, or you can have a bit more freedom and stay out of the dungeon. For that choice, you need to rise, go to the bed, part the curtains, enter the bed, wait for me to come to bed, and yield to me more enthusiastically than you have done just now. I will have my sport with you."

Jan wasn't quick enough to answer before the duke spoke again, after laughing. "But I did enjoy you, so even if you choose to return to your friends, I will take you into the bed first."

There wasn't much of a choice for Jan. With a thought to what Father Slawek had counseled that he need do, but also because of Jan's own curiosity, he chose the bed, where the duke took him again and again in curtained seclusion, brutally and totally, in various positions, into Christmas morning.

The duke laughed when he approached the bed, because, rather than being coiled in a protective fetal position, Jan was lying on his back, legs bent and spread, waiting for his master in an easily accessible position.

"So, you yield to me willingly now?" the duke growled.

"Yes, Sire, I yield to you willingly. Come to bed and be my master of the bed."

The duke's fetish was the conquest of deflowering a young virginal man. He had done that, but there were ways to prolong the effect of that. Red velvet cords descended from the four corner posts of the bed. He wasn't ready yet for the young man to be as willing as he said he was. By trussing the young man up in a spread-eagle, totally bound position, and covering him in cruel taking, ignoring the cries for mercy when they came, the duke could take again as like it was the first time—and he did—repeatedly, until Jan had nothing left to try to protect.

The young man obviously was pleasing and yielding enough for the duke's Christmas sport, because when morning came, the duke did not send Jan away from his bed. The young man could not have left the bed without help in any case. But, truth be known, after the first couple of layings, Jan was more than willing to take the duke's cock.

* * * *

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned."

"In what way have you sinned, my son?"

Two days after Christmas, Jan had been freed from Duke Basile's bed, as the duke had business to attend to. Jan had begged him not to go and not even he was sure at that point whether he did that just to remain in the duke's good graces. The young man now being permitted to move about the castle in a limited way, Jan had headed straight for the castle chapel. He hadn't moved very fast, more hobbled, as the duke had been sexually demanding and was built big. He found that Father Slawek was in the confessional.

"I have lain with a man," Jan confessed.

"Willingly?" the priest asked.

Jan paused before answering. "It's difficult to say, Father. Not at first, but later I can't say I minded very much." But hadn't he become more enthusiastic about it than that?

"But is this your sin or the man's sin?"

"I don't understand."

"It was the duke, wasn't it?"

"Yes, Father."

"And he didn't really give you a choice, did he?"

Again there was a pause. "No, not at first."

"But after the first time, he didn't really give you a choice then, either, did he? You were adjusting to what you didn't really have a choice in." It seemed important to the priest that Jan had been coerced. "You could not have left his bed or his chamber without his permission. You could not have closed your legs to him. Learning to endure it and not being given a choice in engaging in it are not the same thing."

"No, I suppose not. No, I had no choice, not really."

"Was it just that once?"

"I have been in the duke's bed the last two days—leaving only to eat and relieve myself."

"But not sleeping all of the time?"

"Not sleeping even most of the time."

It was the priest's turn to pause for a few minutes. That was a nonanswer that really was an answer. He knew the duke's stamina was legendary. "How many times did this sin happen?"

"I lost count. The duke is a virile and vigorous man."

Father Slawek sighed. "If you had no choice, then it is not your sin."

"But there was another sin, Father."

"What was that?"

"I am afraid to say."

"I cannot absolve it if I am not told what it is."

"When I lay under the duke . . . when he was inside me . . . and moving his . . ."

"Yes, I understand."

"When he was seeding me, I was not thinking of him—at least not all of the time."

"Explain."

The response came almost in a whisper. "I was thinking that it was you, Father. That you were on top of me, inside me. That it was you putting your seed inside me."

In the next moment, the door to the confessional opened and Father Slawek was standing there, glaring at Jan.

"I'm sorry, Father . . . I didn't mean to . . ."

The priest extended his hand. "Come with me," he said.

His chamber was just off the chapel. There was a bed and a crudely built wooden table with a chair. A chest was against the side wall. They only needed the bed. They embraced and kissed, and they fumbled in helping each other disrobe. Father Slawek's hands were all over the young man, exploring curves and crevices. He carried Jan over to the bed and lay him down on his back. He grasped Jan's ankles and spread and raised the young man's legs, finding that the duke had been so thick and had been there so recently that the young man didn't need in any preparation.

Jan cried out, "Tak, tak!—Yes, yes!" as the priest penetrated and began to pump, fucking the young man to heaven—creating his own sin.

* * * *

The whimpering and low moaning weren't all his. Jan was on his back, trying to catch his next breath, because Duke Basile was kneeling between his spread and bent legs on the canopy bed in the duke's bed chamber and, while grasping the youth's throat with the iron grip of a warrior's hand, was vigorously pumping the young man's ass with his thick shaft.

The duke took his hand away to make a swipe at the other young man beside them who he'd just finished deflowering and who was curled up in a fetal position, facing away from them, sobbing and whimpering. Red velvet cords that had been released from the four corner posts of the bed after the duke had fucked the bound young man's virginity out of him were still tied to his ankles and wrists.

"Shut up with the blubbering," the duke commanded. "If you can't take it without all of the drama, you may leave the bed and be gone."

The other young man shot out of the bed like he'd been fired by a cannon and hobbled to the door to the corridor, still whimpering and covering his face with his hands. Jan pulled back in the bed, expecting the duke, in anger, to go after the other young man and do something violent, but the duke just laughed and muttered, "He'll learn. I'll teach him."

The youth hadn't known when he was sent to bring the duke his morning ale why he, a comely youth of eighteen only recently having been spied by the duke among the castle's kitchen staff, had been chosen to come to the chamber that morning. But of course those who sent him—and the duke, who had summoned him—knew what his duty would be.

"Clean yourself up, control your blubbering, have counsel with your betters on your duties here, and attend to me here tonight," the duke called after him before directing his attentions to Jan, who he still held pinned under him in the bed—who he was still drilling with his thick, vigorous cock.

It all had meaning for Jan. Between Christmas Eve and until now, days after the New Year, it had been only Jan who the duke had taken to his bed, so the young man had some hope—counseled also by Father Slawek, who Jan met with and went under whenever they could manage it—that the duke would do him no harm. He had become the duke's catamite—or, at least, had every reason to believe he had become that. All of this calculation was being made in the knowledge that Duke Hainrich, Jan's father, had done nothing to pay the rest of his ransom or redeem the hostages being held until it was paid.

Finished with Jan, the duke growled and rolled out of bed. "How a cowardly bastard like Hainrich could have sired a sweet youth like you is beyond me," he muttered, as he clapped his hands for attendants to enter the chamber and attend to him.

"Pardon, Sire?" Jan asked, not knowing where this was coming from.

"Know you what day this is, young man?"

"No, Sire, I do not," Jan answered, but of course he did. Father Slawek and marked off every single progressing day for him. "I have not been marking the days, Sire," he lied.

"It be Epiphany, January 6th. The day the ransom was to be paid up or hostages starting to go back to your cowardly father in pine boxes and with their necks stretched. Be sure you are watching the start of the finish, young man—and that you are thinking it is all your bastard of a dishonorable father's doing."

"Yes, Sire," Jan said, head bowed. But he knew it was not all his father's fault, not all of how the nobility treated with each other—and not that he was lying in the duke's bed, naked, and with the duke's seed dribbling down his inner thighs. That part was not Duke Hainrich's fault.

* * * *

"See, I told you, the duke will go through with the threat."

Father Slawek and Jan was looking down into the courtyard of Lublin Castle at the gallows that had been set up. The remaining hostages from Kowel other than Jan and the bishop who had been held in the castle dungeon had just been brought up to the courtyard, and one, an elderly merchant, had been pulled from the group and moved toward the scaffold.

"But maybe he won't go through with it. And maybe, if I can continue to please him in bed, I won't be included," Jan said. He couldn't say it with conviction. Whether or not he still pleased the duke in bed, the duke had shown that morning that his primary fetish of deflowering young men had not passed, and that couldn't happen with Jan again. The young man knew he couldn't claim to have any sexual hold over the man other than the duke's waning lust for him.

"Nay, false hope, I'm afraid," Slawek said. "Look at that other group of prisoners being held over there, tied to a stake with rope."

Jan looked over to a group of five men, dressed as farming peasants, and huddled together, quaking. "Who are they?" he asked.

"They are citizens of Kowel—men who had been working the fields near the border with Holszany. Duke Basile has had them captured to watch the executions and, after each hanging, for one of them to be sent back to Duke Hainrich with the body to report that Basile is carrying out his threat until and unless your father sends the rest of the ransom. But I don't think he will, do you?"

"No, I'm afraid he won't—even for me," the young man said, with resignation.

"How many captive peasants do you see, Jan?"

"There are five," Jan answered.

"And how many hostages are there left, including you?"

"Five. There were six, but the bishop was let free and did not return."

"So, there is a peasant captive to report on your execution as well, is there not?"

Jan could not answer and would not have even if their discussion had not been interrupted with the duke carrying through with his threat on the lives of the hostages. The first one, the old merchant, was swinging from the gallows, and one of the captive peasants had been pulled out of line to prepare to be dispatched to the Duchy of Kowel.

"All attention is on what is happening down there at this moment," Father Slawek said in a calming voice, touching the shuddering, presumably doomed fourth son of Duke Hainrich.

"And so?" Jan answered in a small voice.

"And so, you could put this on," Slawek said, holding forth a monk's habit, "and we could use the opportunity to slip away together, past where all of the attention is going to. I've arranged for the postern gate to be open and for horses to await us."

"You mean escape? You and me? But to where?"

"I came from the monastery in Opole, but no one here knows that. They all think I came from the cathedral here in the city. Yes, you and me. Together. Come away with me and have a quiet life that doesn't include the machinations of the noble houses at all."

"A life with you?"

"Yes, if you wish to be with me. We at Opole are not a pious monastery in that regard."

And, so, that's what they did.